Nowhere Men
by a certain slant of light
Summary: They are alike only in misfortune. ჯ BalthierAshe. 1sentence.


**Author's Note**: This is a completed claim for the LiveJournal community 1sentence.

So, had this claim for a while, FINALLY DID IT. Sorry to anyone else who was scoping the pairing! Anyway, finished it up a few nights ago. It's in… sort of chronological order, but only sort of. Enjoy!

(Doing this makes me want to write a lot more Balthier/Ashe. I almost forgot how much I completely love the pairing.)

**Warnings**: Implied sexual relations! (What prompt set is complete without them?) Spoilers for the end of FFXII, with complete disregard to Revenant Wings. Oh, and of course major abuse of dashes and semi-colons (one sentence especially, it's probably my favorite because in it I completely raped punctuation then left it in an alley for someone else's sloppy seconds). Comments appreciated! ♥

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Final Fantasy XII!

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Nowhere Men

#01: **Fire**:  
Cinders singe her skin as the explosion rings between her ears; she glances up to the balcony and thinks she sees through the ash the figures of a Viera, a boy, and another who is obscured by spots in her vision.

#02: **Silk**:  
She bathes herself in blood and feels as stone.

#03: **Laugh**:  
"In this or any lifetime, I will not love you, but will you permit the tolerance I reserve for children and reptiles," she tells him, and he laughs.

#04: **Music**:  
She can sing, but chooses not to – her song is in her sword, as the eagle cries of death.

#05: **Temptation**:  
"Do not be tempted to mix business with pleasure," she warns, to which he replies, "For a pirate, they are already one and the same."

#06: **Eclipse**:  
His hunger sometimes eclipses the unknowable emotion in his eyes, leaving her frightened and hesitant.

#07: **Highway**:  
If there were speed limits in the sky, Balthier would break all of them just for the sake of a new wanted poster.

#08: **Strength**:  
Ashe sees strength in all those around her and takes it unto herself; he watches and keeps his to lend for when she realizes not all strength comes from a clenched fist.

#09: **Silent**:  
Balthier is silent when it matters – to him.

#10: **Wings**:  
He encourages her to fly, and she resists; she will always be without wings, she decides, because what she does not have cannot be taken from her.

#11: **Lock**:  
"The key to your heart," he says mockingly, "where exactly have you hidden it?"; and she tells him, of course: "There is none – You must fashion your own, or else be content to stare longingly at the closed gates."

#12: **Wait**:  
Days pass, landscapes rise and fall, clouds thicken and thin – Balthier measures his patience in the number of her furtive glances, and waits.

#13: **Drink**:  
The night is sweat-slick and sticky; it pushes itself and cushions against every inch of her skin and his, but is still lighter than the Maddhu on their tongues.

#14: **Promise**:  
"Promise me nothing," she says, and does not think it at all clever when he tells her, "I give you my word."

#15: **Hurricane**:  
Wrapped in armor, she is a storm to overtake the world, that wreaks havoc and takes vengeance on any foolish enough to wander into her path; wrapped in nothing but night and firelight and the scars that fleck her skin, she is a blade with no edges, that shines for him and him alone.

#16: **Dance**:  
There is no music to their dance, only the hiss of swords, the screech of gunshots, and the snap-crackle of bursting sap.

#17: **Midnight**:  
Watch is always tiring, and every one of them has nodded off once or twice – but when Balthier and Ashe have it together, neither gets any sleep at all.

#18: **Talent**:  
His effect on her is more apparent as the time slips past and her aptitude for trouble begins to resurface.

#19: **Formal**:  
"Pretend for a moment that I am a princess," she grumbles, agitated, putting a stop to his wondering tongue; to which he all-too-happily replies, "Why, your highness, I had no idea you fancied those sorts of games."

#20: **Overwhelmed**:  
The rage is liquid heat in her veins, searing her heart; she knows he worries there will never be room for trust.

#21: **Dream**:  
At night, she dreams of a man she knows not – one who soars through the open sky, whose weapon screams through armor, whose eyes are alight with mischief… and who will stay with her when their journey is through, when she has nothing left to offer.

#22: **Red**:  
"If you chain him," Fran's accent drifts heavily to Ashe's ears, the viera's garnet eyes burning, "you will lose him, just as the Wood has lost me."

#23: **Gravity**:  
Skystones keep the _Strahl_ afloat on bubbles of warm air, but nothing could stop Ashe from falling.

#24: **World**:  
She asks him once, "Is there any place you have not been?" and he tells her, "I have only been every place you wish to go."

#25: **Breath**:  
She never stole his breath with a glance or a flash of skin, like most girls – she did it with a sword swift and words swifter.

#26: **Whisper**:  
"Know me," the words slip silently from her lips and onto his, "unlike any after or before me."

#27: **Box**:  
In the airship she feels enclosed, claustrophobic, trapped; Balthier places her hands on the ship's controls, and for the first time watches her truly fly.

#28: **Cover**:  
Rain is the lightest clothing she has ever worn, but it does not breathe as he does, cool and sharp against her skin.

#29: **Fever**:  
His lips fall on hers as she hisses, "My love for you is a disease…"; Balthier smiles into her kiss to tell her, "And the cure will cost you dearly, princess."

#30: **Sacred**:  
The stone hums in her palm, her skin growing pale and the wrinkles of her hand softening around it, as if it is savoring fragments of her past and future.

#31: **Ice**:  
The Rift calls to her, its sheets of snow an inviting sleeping place; his hand grips firmly her shoulder, and she turns away from the fissure toward the summit.

#32: **Candle**:  
Balthier's not sure what sort of metaphor it is (aside from an amusing one) when Al-Cid gives her a candle and says, "The only one anyone could ever hold to your beauty" – and she throws it in the fire as soon as they are away from Bur-Omisace.

#33: **Lies**:  
"Will you stay with me?" she asks when the moon watches them from behind filmy clouds; his lips are silent against her throat.

#34: **Forever**:  
She feels his heat against her back as she looks upon the blank, frosted faces of refugees, bodies bedded on halos of scarlet – and she knows now the only thing that is forever.

#35: **Cold**:  
Calling forward Mateus is too easy for her; she shivers; he notices, so mutters the mantra to summon Belias to remind her that where this is cold, there is also heat.

#36: **Mask**:  
"You could wear a mask of moss, a robe of wood, a wig of leaves – you could be nature itself, perfectly hidden, and even with blind eyes I would always know you."

#37: **Talk**:  
No three words have ever been harder to speak or felt so heavy on her tongue – or tasted so deathly sweet.

#38: **Fall**:  
They are the weeks before winter, when everything waits, fearful, to wither.

#39: **Unknown**:  
Hugging her finger, the ring seeps the frost of death into her skin; yet when Balthier wears it, the band brightens to shine as it once did, oblivious to the horrors it has faced.

#40: **Journey**:  
Her heels echo against the steel, tinny ripples snaking through the _Bahamut_; he steps lightly, and makes no sound at all.

#41: **Farewells**:  
Ashe never says goodbye, only calls his name into a radio that parrots tauntingly back at her.

#42: **Memory**:  
When she is alone, she has nothing but the weight of jewelry and Dalmasca on her shoulders, and a perfect view of an empty grave.

#43: **Hero**:  
He is not the sort of hero to return for the damsel – and she is not the sort of woman to be mistaken for one.

#44: **Forgotten**:  
He can fill his evenings with company and his purse with gil, but never have enough until he knows she is searching for him.

#45: **Search**:  
Ashe watches the world outside the palace move, change, shift, and bloom; she wonders if his face is in the crowd, before pointedly deciding not to look too hard.

#46: **Ring**:  
The words "found something more valuable" continue to chime in her head long after the note is ashes in the hearth.

#47: **Run**:  
Balthier has always run from his problems – some small part of her wonders if that is why he still has not come for her.

#48: **View**:  
_Find me when I am alone,_ the note reads, _but do not look for me when I am lost._

#49: **Hope**:  
"I hope you will accept my invitation," Al-Cid purrs with a flourish; the brief glimpse of a gilded vest near the ballroom balcony, and she readily declines.

#50: **Body**:  
In that moment she wants to slap him, wants to punch him, kick him, not even touch him; she does none of those things, only throws her entire body against him and clings to the eye of the storm.


End file.
